


Limited in Time and Space

by eve11



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Drama, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-28
Updated: 2011-05-28
Packaged: 2017-10-19 20:32:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/204915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eve11/pseuds/eve11
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Someone is filling her infinite spaces with infinite space.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Limited in Time and Space

**Author's Note:**

> Speculative for the end of "The Pandorica Opens" and the start of "The Big Bang". Eleven POV.

The Doctor pleads with his enemies. It won't work--he knows it won't--but he's at their mercy and they all know it. It's the only thing left to do, and he has to do something because the TARDIS is screaming inside his head _now now please you must listen to me now you must come back now_ \--like the worst unscratchable itch in the world that suddenly sears to a burn across his mind-- _now now NOW **LISTEN TO ME!**_

Oh, his beautiful ship.

They scream the same words as the walls sweep away the outside world with the clang of advanced technology masquerading as stone. He grits his teeth, eyes shut tight and fingers curling into immobile fists as the TARDIS thrashes for a foothold inside his head.

A brief echo emerges from the maelstrom. _I'm sorry, my love._

He tries to hold onto it, to anchor them both, but he can't. Something is filling each of her infinite spaces with infinite space. It's an aleph-null expansion at light speed and there's no hope of containing it. Temporal pressure builds across their psychic link. He can't stop screaming long enough to think, _there's no need for a prison, she's tearing us both apart--_

Then he's suddenly alone, gasping for air in pitch blackness. He blinks at blank space, listening to the muted hum of psychic inhibitor initialization, already fading. His empty head aches and rebels at the thought of computing how much of himself he's just lost along with the link to his TARDIS. Naturally, this prison is jamming any and all communications. She could still be alive, at least for another few seconds. Minutes, maybe.

The Pandorica settles. The psychic dampeners finish their descent like invisible sailcloth sent streaming down the walls. The last locks rumble into place. There is nothing to see, nothing to feel.

He slows his heartsbeat by a factor of ten. He initiates respiratory bypass. The air is dense and smothering, and there are no echoes. There is nothing to hear.

If he were inclined to panic, there would never be a better time.

Time. Time, time, time. He needs time.

And if this is the right kind of fairy tale, the kind where the builders always overlook something poetic when building inescapable prisons, then . . .

There. At the corner of his temporal eye, a foul, faint light, growing sickly brighter beyond the Pandorica's impenetrable walls. And another. And another. Surrounding this box are thousands of cracks in the skin of the universe. And, as close as they are to the meta-event, almost any of them will lead away from the Silence. Toward hope.

The Doctor slows his body rhythms to one one-thousandth pace. He draws a breath for the centuries and cocoons local temporal fields tight around himself in as close to perpetual stasis as he dares.

Then he spins a set of likelihoods, coaxing the cracks forward, daring them to open beneath his prison until he is again a madman in a box, tumbling through time.


End file.
